9'10" x 13'7" Persian Kashan Rug | Red Floral Field with Navy Medallion | Signed Cartouche

This is a full room-size Kashan in the classic central Persian formula: a deep red field carrying an unbroken web of vine and blossom, a lobed navy and ivory medallion anchoring the center, and a small woven cartouche set into one end of the field, the mark of a workshop piece rather than an anonymous commercial weave. The pile is wool at 3/8", dense and level from end to end, with no repairs and no thin areas, and the drawing holds its symmetry cleanly across the full 13'7" of length. At 9'10" wide it lands squarely in the useful 10x14 Persian rugs bracket, large enough to seat a sofa group or a 10 seat table entirely on the wool. It ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a cusped ivory medallion built around a light blue inner panel with a small red rosette at its heart, the whole thing framed by a navy lobed surround that throws pendant finials up and down the long axis. Four corner spandrels in the same navy repeat the ivory and light blue palmette work, so the field reads as a red cartouche shaped reserve floating inside a darker frame. Across that red ground runs the Kashan vocabulary in full: Shah Abbasi palmettes, open rosettes, tulip and bud forms, and long feathery lanceolate leaves that curl back on themselves, all mirrored precisely across both axes so nothing looks scattered. The main border is a wide navy band of meandering vine linking alternating palmettes and rosettes, flanked on both sides by light blue and rose guard stripes that carry smaller repeating blossoms right out to the selvage. The signature cartouche sits in a green and ivory reserve within the border area at one end, visible in the close detail photograph.

Color

The field is a true madder red, warm and slightly blued rather than orange, and it stays even across the whole width with only the gentle tonal movement good hand-dyed wool always shows. Against it the border navy is close to indigo, deep enough to read almost black at a distance and to give the red its snap. The mid tones do the real work: a soft sky blue used for the guard stripes and for hundreds of small leaf and petal details, a chalky ivory in the medallion core, spandrels and vine outlines, and a faded rose that softens the transition between red and navy. Scattered through the florals are olive green, saffron gold, camel brown and a pale pink, and the signature cartouche adds a sage green ground with gold and cream. The overall effect belongs with the classic red and burgundy Persian rugs that sit well over dark wood, and the lanolin still in the wool gives the pile a low sheen that shifts as you walk around the rug.

Origin and Weaving Quality

Kashan sits in central Persia, north of Isfahan, and its looms trace back to the Safavid court workshops that produced some of the most copied designs in rug history. Local wool there is soft and lustrous, which is why Persian Kashan rugs wear so evenly and why the red field keeps its depth instead of going flat. This piece follows the town formula that made the name, red field, navy lobed medallion, ivory spandrels, and it does so with the fine even knotting and tight curved line drawing that separates a real Kashan workshop weave from a village approximation of one. The back photograph shows straight consistent rows on a cotton foundation, which is what holds a rug this size square on the floor for generations. It is the look most people already picture when they think of a Persian rug: when you watch Shark Tank there is a Persian Kashan on the floor, and a signed cartouche like the one on this rug tells you a named workshop stood behind the piece.